[Your Cursed Energy was nearly spent. After the emergency treatment on Misato Kuroi, there wasn't enough left to fully heal Suguru Geto.]
[The rest would have to wait for Shoko.]
[As you hauled Geto's battered body upward through the groaning elevator shaft, a pulse of Cursed Energy rolled through the earth above you.]
[It shook something deeper than bone. It shook the soul.]
[That wasn't an explosion. That was space being erased.]
[The ground wailed. Jujutsu High's barrier shuddered. Even buried underground, you both felt the sheer, tyrannical absoluteness of that power.]
[Geto's face drained of what little color remained. He recognized it as Satoru.]
[But the presence was alien. Terrifying. Nothing like the person he knew.]
[When you finally surfaced, the sight that greeted you was a ruin carved by something beyond comprehension.]
[The once lush approach path now bore a massive, impossibly smooth trench gouged through its center.]
[Every trace of matter along that line... trees, stone, architecture... had been annihilated in a single strike of Hollow Technique: Purple.]
[And at the far end of that destruction stood a broken corpse.]
[Toji Fushiguro, the heavenly tyrant who had seemed untouchable, now missing the entire left half of his body.]
[He hadn't fallen. Even in death, he stood like a war god, the Inverted Spear of Heaven still locked in his grip.]
["Skkr... skkr..."]
[A teeth-grinding scrape shattered the silence.]
[You looked down. An ugly, worm-like Cursed Spirit... Toji's inventory spirit, the one he'd used to store his weapons... was dragging itself across the ground. Its master's death had severed the contract binding it. Half its body had been sheared away by the attack's residual force, and it was crawling on instinct toward the only Cursed Spirit user present.]
[It was begging for help.]
[As it squirmed forward, the contents of its extradimensional stomach spilled out behind it like garbage from a split bag.]
[Special grade cursed tools scattered across the ground, each worth a fortune. No one spared them a glance.]
[Because among that pile of debris lay a girl's body in a school uniform, discarded like refuse.]
[Riko Amanai lay with her eyes closed, as though she'd only fallen asleep.]
[But the ragged hole at her temple and the blood pooling outward from the back of her skull declared the truth with merciless finality.]
[Your breathing stopped. You'd witnessed her death countless times inside the Simulator. You'd told yourself over and over.]
[This is only a simulation. It's a script for gathering intel. As long as it doesn't happen in reality...]
[But now you were staring at the girl who, hours ago, had been laughing on an Okinawa beach, lighting fireworks, choosing to live... and she lay on the ground like a discarded rag doll.]
[The dam broke. Your fists clenched until your nails split the skin of your palms, blood dripping to the earth.]
[Rage, Grief, Helplessness. They churned through your chest like magma, and for a moment you nearly doubled over.]
[Then you equipped Mental Pollution Resistance and Life is Like a Play. A wave of cold, mechanical calm seized control of your mind.]
[It was like encasing the person called Touma Hayase inside a suit of heavy armor labeled player.]
[The muscles of your face, twisted with grief and fury, smoothed out piece by piece under the skill's influence.]
[To anyone watching, you looked like a Jujutsu Sorcerer maintaining composure in the face of loss.]
[Only you knew about the silent howl behind that mask.]
["...Geto."]
[A white figure drifted down. Satoru Gojo hadn't walked. He hung suspended in the air, the tips of his shoes hovering centimeters above the ground.]
[Every wound on his body had healed without a trace. Not even a scar remained. His blood-soaked Jujutsu High uniform snapped in the wind.]
[His gaze fell to Riko's body on the ground. The wild arrogance that had blazed in those Six Eyes was gone. In its place, a deep, undisguisable exhaustion and emptiness.]
[Geto studied his oldest friend, this person who was both familiar and a stranger. As Gojo's closest partner, he saw it immediately.]
[Satoru had changed.]
[The clown, the brat, the carefree strongest... that version of him had died. What stood in his place was something closer to an actual god, hovering above the mortal world.]
["Satoru... is that you?"]
[Geto's voice came out parched.]
["You're slow, Geto."]
[Gojo turned his head. His tone was terrifyingly flat. No rise, no fall. Nothing.]
["Actually, no. You got here too fast."]
[His eyes traced the wounds still carved across Geto's body, vicious despite your earlier treatment.]
[If Geto had arrived a little later, he wouldn't have had to see this.]
["I'm glad you're both okay."]
[Gojo said it softly, like stating something trivial.]
["Shoko's on her way. Let her patch you up properly. And Hayase, you don't look so great either."]
["Hayase already did emergency treatment. I'm not dying anytime soon..." Geto stared down at his own hands. The composed honor student was gone. His face was etched with defeat and self-loathing. "But even if I'm fine, it doesn't change anything."]
[Gojo's reply was quiet, detached.]
["I'm the one who ruined everything."]
[He glanced at you, then back at Riko.]
["This has nothing to do with either of you. Hayase put his life on the line and wounded that guy, and I still lost. If it hadn't been for..."]
[He spoke his self-recrimination in a voice stripped of all inflection. The atmosphere grew so suffocating that even he couldn't finish the sentence.]
[Silence held for a long time. Then Gojo lifted his head, those blue eyes fixing on a point beyond the barrier of Jujutsu High.]
["Hey, Geto. Want to kill them all?"]
[Geto blinked. "Who?"]
["The leadership of the Star Religious Group. And all those followers who cheered."]
[Gojo extended a hand, closing his fingers around something invisible in the air. His tone stayed flat, casual, like asking what was for dinner.]
["The way I am now... I don't think I'd feel anything doing it."]
[You watched him. You knew he meant it.]
[He'd crossed the threshold of humanity moments ago. His sense of human connection was fading, thinning out. He was waiting for a reason. Or permission.]
["...Forget it, Satoru."]
[Geto closed his eyes and drew a deep, shaking breath, forcing down the venom coiling in his chest.]
[He was still the Suguru Geto who believed in principle. For now, at least.]
["There's no meaning in it."]
["If we go now, all we'd find are low-level followers who don't know anything. The people who orchestrated this, the ones with insider knowledge of the jujutsu world... they vanished the moment Toji succeeded."]
["Slaughtering a bunch of brainwashed civilians won't change the fact that Riko is dead."]
[Gojo stared for a moment. He murmured the word back to himself.]
["Meaning... there's no meaning?"]
[He turned, those Six Eyes boring straight into Geto's, searching for confirmation.]
["Is that really so important to us? Right now?"]
["It is... critically important."]
[Geto opened his eyes and answered without hesitation, but his white-knuckled fists and the faint tremor in his voice betrayed how hard he was working to convince himself.]
["Especially for sorcerers with our kind of power. If we lose sight of why we use that power, then we really do become monsters."]
[You stood nearby, listening in silence. You knew this was Geto's final line of defense.]
[He was using righteousness to anchor Gojo. And to anchor himself, before he shattered entirely.]
[But that defense had already cracked today. A fissure too deep to mend.]
---
[The infirmary at Jujutsu High reeked of antiseptic and cigarette smoke.]
[Shoko Ieiri worked with a cigarette dangling from her lips, channeling Reverse Cursed Technique into the wounds still carved across Geto's body.]
[Your earlier field treatment had been enough to keep him stable, but that was the limit of what those conditions allowed. Knitting torn muscle and resetting shattered bone required the school's resident medic-in-training.]
[Misato Kuroi had been moved to the adjacent room. She'd survived, but her mental state was in ruins. Since waking, she'd done nothing but weep or sit in hollow silence.]
["Done."]
[As the last wound sealed, Shoko dusted her hands. Even behind those permanent dark circles, exhaustion showed.]
["I don't know what kind of monster you ran into... but I'm glad you came back alive."]
[She didn't pry. Sharp as ever, she'd sensed the crushing weight hanging between the two strongest boys in her class. Even you, usually steady, gave off something she'd rarely felt before.]
[Gojo leaned against the window frame, turning a pair of backup round-framed sunglasses over in his fingers.]
[He'd changed into a clean uniform. The blood-soaked god from earlier might as well have been a hallucination.]
[Noticing your gaze, he tossed the glasses lightly in his palm and explained the mechanics of that final attack in a flat, matter-of-fact tone.]
["Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue and Cursed Technique Reversal: Red. Collide those two infinitely extending techniques against each other, and you generate imaginary mass. That's Hollow Technique: Purple."]
[You studied him. The old Gojo would have been bouncing off the walls by now, shoving his face into yours, yelling something like, "Hayase, use that technique of yours to copy it for me!" The excitement would've been unbearable.]
[But now he gazed quietly out the window, and you knew that version of him was gone.]
["Oh, right. That assassin said something before he died."]
[Gojo told you that in his final moments, Toji Fushiguro had revealed he had a son who would be sold to the Zenin Clan in two or three years. Told Gojo to do whatever he wanted with the kid.]
[You hadn't expected that. Of all the things that man could have said with his last breath, he'd chosen this.]
[You filed it away and told Gojo to bring you along when the time came to find the boy.]
[Not because you worried Gojo might do something reckless to a child. Not because you had any plans of your own. It was simpler than that: a man going to meet the son of someone he'd killed shouldn't go alone. The relationship between Gojo and that child... killer and orphan... twisted in a way that unsettled you.]
[Gojo had also destroyed the Inverted Spear of Heaven in front of you. The special grade cursed tool capable of forcibly nullifying active Cursed Techniques.]
[Only then did you understand. That was how Toji had pierced Gojo's Limitless and nearly killed him.]
[After that, everything concerning the Star Plasma Vessel was taken over entirely by the higher-ups.]
[You'd asked Masamichi Yaga to relay your request to attend Riko Amanai's funeral. The answer came back: denied.]
[But reading between the lines of what Yaga relayed, it wasn't so much that attendance was forbidden. It was more that no funeral had ever been planned.]
[You expressed confusion to Yaga, but he could only explain, carefully, that everything involving Tengen and the Star Plasma Vessel was classified, and that Riko had no surviving family in any practical sense.]
[He'd said enough. You understood what had happened.]
[This wasn't something Yaga had the power to change, so you didn't push him further.]
[You did ask what would become of Misato Kuroi. He shook his head. He didn't know.]
[One phrase kept circling through your mind: the bow discarded once the birds are gone.]
[The higher-ups probably wished Kuroi had died in the attack. Would've saved them the paperwork.]
[In the days that followed, you continued investigating the Star Religious Group. The real question gnawed at you: who had issued the assassination order? Who had access to that kind of classified intelligence?]
[There was only one person capable of that kind of information work. Mei Mei. Which meant your finances took a hit.]
[She'd been surprised when you first brought her the commission. From her perspective, the affair was over. Digging further served no purpose.]
[Even as a preventive measure, the next merger was five hundred years away. Not their problem.]
[But it mattered to you. You knew Toji Fushiguro wasn't the true linchpin of what happened. Remove him from the equation and someone else would have stepped in to play the same role.]